Infinite(62)

My brow furrowed. “Who?”

“Eve Brier.”

I swore under my breath.

“Yeah, isn’t it funny how things work out? Eve was smart. She really got me. She told me that I felt guilty about killing my father and getting away with it. She said I felt an intense need to be punished, so I kept putting myself in situations that proved I was a bad person. Of course, I hadn’t told her about any of the other people I’d killed, but I guess that would have just proved her point.”

Dylan got up from the chair again. He grabbed a skinny-fit dress shirt in deep purple, with a checkered design. He held it up on the hanger. “What do you think of this shirt? Can I pull it off?”

I stared at him. “What?”

“Is it stylish? Maybe with a button vest? There’s not a lot to choose from here.”

“You want fashion tips? Are you kidding me?”

He shrugged and took off the leather jacket and unbuttoned his olive shirt. When he slipped it off, I noticed a pattern of scars all across his bare chest, like cuts made with a razor blade. It was obvious they’d been self-inflicted. I understood why Eve thought that this Dylan felt a desire for punishment. He’d been taking out his self-hatred on his body for years.

“Anyway, that was when she told me about the Many Worlds thing,” he went on. “Did you think it was bullshit?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. Me too. But Eve wanted to try it on someone, and I thought, what the hell? She said experiencing other worlds would help me deal with the bad choices I’d made. So I let her inject me with her little cocktail. That was a ride, huh? There I was in the Art Institute, surrounded by all of these other versions of myself. Except I was the only one who knew what it meant. The others were oblivious. Knowing what was going on made it even worse. The more of them I saw, the more I felt like I was cracking up. Is that what it was like for you?”

I didn’t want to answer, but I did. “Yes, that’s exactly how it was.”

He nodded, as if it made him happy to hear that. Then, without saying anything more, he turned around and went into the bathroom. With his back to me, he found a razor and shaving cream in the medicine cabinet, and he began shaving his face with slow, measured strokes. He was doing that with Tai’s body still in the tub, where he’d drowned her. We could see each other in the mirror, and he smiled a little as I kept struggling to free my hands and feet. But I couldn’t.

Eventually, he finished, washed his face, and came back, drying his now-smooth skin with a towel. He sat down and continued his story. “I didn’t try to go anywhere that first time. I just got the lay of the land, you know? Then I said the word—you know the word—and boom, there I was back with Eve. She asked if the treatment helped me, and I told her it did. That was true, but not in the way she was thinking. I was already starting to wonder if I could really go into one of these worlds. So I said I wanted more sessions. The next time, I followed one of the other Dylans out the door. I had no idea what to expect, but holy shit. I was totally lost. When I woke up, it was days later. I was on the can in a men’s room in Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg. It made no sense, right? Except when I got out into the mall, I spotted my double, and I followed him. I never let him see me, but I got to know his whole life. I stayed there for a week or so, and finally I said the safe word to get the hell out of there. Same thing, there I was, back in Eve’s office, and like half an hour had passed on her end. I told her I wanted to keep doing it. I wanted to go back. Only this time I knew what to do.”

“Kill,” I murmured.

“Oh, yeah. I followed another Dylan into his life, and I watched him. Studied him. Figured out his routines. Then I did an experiment. I went into his job at the hotel while he was at a meeting somewhere else. Nobody knew. Nobody suspected a thing. I mean, why would they? So then I slept with his wife. She thought it was the best sex they’d ever had. I loved that. And then on a night when I knew he was home alone, I picked up a girl at a bar and went to her place.”

I closed my eyes. I knew what was coming.

“And then I cut out her heart.”

I swore, over and over and over.

“The next day, I watched from the park as the police arrested this other Dylan Moran. They had him on camera at the bar. He’d given his name to the bartender. They had his fingerprints in her apartment. They took him away, screaming that he was innocent. I’d never had a high like that. The thrill of killing wasn’t even close to the thrill of watching Dylan Moran suffer for my crimes. Of all things, it turned out that Eve was right about me. I really did want the punishment. I wanted everybody to know that Dylan Moran was an evil, terrible person who should be put away forever. But the best thing was, I could do it over and over and never stop. There was always another world, another Dylan to destroy.”

“The perfect crime,” I said.

“The perfect crime,” he agreed. “You’re right.”

He put on the checked purple shirt he’d found earlier, and then he went back to the closet and grabbed a gray vest. He changed pants, too, switching from jeans to black slacks with tapered legs. He slipped his feet into loafers. He took one of the cologne bottles from the nightstand, opened it, and winced as he inhaled. Even so, he dabbed a little on his face. I could smell the musk. He sat down again and checked his watch and obviously concluded that he had time for one more cigarette. He was loosening up, enjoying himself now as he blew smoke up into the blades of the ceiling fan.